Me and the Church the Church and Me

Has anybody else noticed that all the talk at the Yoof Sinod is about “The Church this and The Church that and The Church should be this and The Church should be that.”

This is simply diabolical double talk launched in order to confuse, obfuscate, dissemble, deceive, distort and destroy.

“The Church” doesn’t really do or be anything.

Individual Catholics do stuff.

The great thing about the weekend was not more gobbledegook talk about “the Church” but the fact that there were seven canonizations.

Here were seven real people who did what they could with what they had where they were. They did not talk about what “the Church” should be or do. They simply got on and followed Jesus Christ with the sort of mad, radical passion that is the hallmark of all the saints.

They gave all and lived all and they were what “the Church” should be and do.

The heart of evangelization and renewal is never some kind of movement or idea about what “the Church” should be or do, but instead it is a call to individuals to wake up and get busy being saints.

The saints do not set out to reform “the Church” or change the world or promote some political ideology.

They simply set out to become all that God created them to be.

Take today’s saint Teresa of Avila: In a church corrupted by complacency, wealth, privilege, immorality and sloth she was determined to find Jesus, and find him she did–with all her heart, soul, mind and strength. Based on this complete conversion she went on to reform the Carmelites, write her treatises on prayer and change the world and the church and even become a Doctor of the Church.

But she did not set out to do all that. She set out to simply love Jesus Christ, her Lord and Savior and to give herself in loving service to him and his church.

That’s why I love her name: Teresa of Jesus.

What does “the Church” need to be and do?

It needs me and you to be and do what we are called by our baptism to do and be.